Two aspects of my life are coming together for the first time. My work with a number of collaborators (Michel Bauwens, Sharon Ede, etc) to conceptualize and articulate cosmo-localism, plus my work over the past decade to meld foresight and action through action research approaches. The result is a course on cosmo-local design. We will…
Action Research and Learning
The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for change
This is a chapter originally published as: Ramos, J. (2016) The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for systemic change,In Pease B., et al. (Ed)Doing Critical Social Work, Allen and Unwin Introduction This chapter takes up the challenge posed by the editors of this volume, to articulate new forms of critical social and…
Linking Foresight and Action
In 2015 I got the opportunity to write a chapter for the The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, a pioneering effort that gathered together the spirit of transformative approaches to participatory action research into a remarkable compilation with dozens and dozens of chapters almost 900 pages long. The book brought together an amazing group…
Train-the-trainer course in strategic foresight and horizon scanning
In early 2016 I got the opportunity to run a very exciting project dear to my heart. For years I’ve been conceptualising a design process for anticipatory governance. In 2012 I was given the opportunity to do the research at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, where I compiled and made sense of the…
Action Research
Action research is an approach to organizational inquiry where researchers provide consulting services in close collaboration with key people in an organization. Action research is a valuable approach because the research process is directly informed by the needs of organizational members (instead of research being outsourced or disconnected from organizational life). We specialize in linking…
Financial Resilience Living Lab
Action Foresight was thrilled to be asked to manage the Financial Resilience Living Lab pilot for the Financial Resilience CRC bid earlier this year. Living Labs are ‘public-private-people-partnerships’; simply they are places where researchers, business, government, other organisations and people come together research a particular topic. They emphasise co-creation, innovation and sustainability. Living Labs treat…
The Foresight Epidemic
The ‘foresight epidemic’ was a project done as part of research with the Smart Services CRC, to investigate the extent to which contemporary social media can be harnesses as platforms for developing public foresight. We used a variety of futures studies methods to explore topics chosen by interest from the public. Topics included: · The…
Bendigo a Thinking Community
In 2012 we put forward a proposal to run an intensive and large scale foresight capacity development process for the citizens of Bendigo in Victoria, Australia. The objective of Bendigo-A Thinking Community was to encourage and engage with the community to think deeply and strategically about expectations and aspirations to develop a more prosperous, liveable…
Community Pulse Project Strategic Evaluation
The Community Pulse Project (CPP) is the City of Port Phillipʼs (CoPP) project for collecting data on changes the community considers important to measure. CPP was set up in 2001 and, after 10 years in operation, the City of Port Phillip established a process to evaluate the project. This evaluation looks back at 10 years…